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Seven Steps To A Thriving Startup Community

In startupland, communities are the hot new thing. We’re starting to see more community builders, managers and architects being hired at earlier stages in a startup’s growth. They are realizing that, before growth hacking and social media marketing, the most important thing your company needs is people. More specifically, people who care about your mission and believe in your team while you’re still in startup diapers.

The funny thing is that community has been a core part of business since the start of, well…business.

There are countless stories of startups finding the road to massive growth by first starting with smaller communities. Craigslist started as an event email list. Instagram started by inviting highly influential people to use their product. Facebook made their product available in one college first, and only after that community became captivated did they expand to others.

The power of community isn’t just limited to social products, either. Every startup has a great deal to gain by engaging their early adopters and planting the seeds for a community that can develop into a movement.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are seven steps for building a community from the ground up:

Build the Community Around the Mission

Be very clear about the problem you’re setting out to solve. What’s your mission? Whats your why? Build your community around that, not around your product or brand. Your product will change, so focus on the problem.

Start With One Person

Startups are in a rush to grow, grow, grow. But even the billion-dollar companies we look up to today started with one person who decided to support a brand-new company with nothing more to show than a passion for solving a problem.

The good news is that you don’t even need a product yet. Since you’re building your community around a mission, you can start building your community from day one. Find someone who has the problem you’re trying to solve and buy them coffee. Learn as much as you can about who they are and how you can help them.

Then do that with a second person. Then a third. You have a community as soon as you connect them with each other.

Make Every Member Feel Special

You, the big important CEO or founder, already spoke to them on the phone or met them for coffee so they probably feel pretty special.

Keep building on that. They should feel special because they are special. You want every member to feel like they have a privilege that others don’t have. And your first few members are extra special because they get to be the first members of something that will one day be huge.

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